An Argument for Patronage

James Freeman described Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s move to strengthen bureaucracy’s and bureaucrats’ control over our Federal government. Citing a CNN report, Freeman wrote:

Betsy Klein and Tami Luhby report for CNN:

The Biden administration has finalized a new rule bolstering protections for career federal workers, marking a move to preemptively halt or significantly slow any efforts by former President Donald Trump, should he win in November, to reduce or alter the federal workforce.

Again, I Ask

The subheadline of a Wall Street Journal editorial concerning Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s pushing Ukraine to stop hitting inside Russia, particularly Russia’s oil refineries, says it al.

The White House fears attacks on refineries inside Russia could raise global prices.

In the body of the editorial:

…the Biden Administration had urged Ukraine to halt its campaign targeting Russian refineries and warned that “the drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation.”

Election Interference

The No Labels group has folded its tents and quit the political race for this year, for a few reasons I’ve written about before. It appears, though, that there’s more to this fiasco than understood heretofore [ellipses in the original, emphasis added].

Democratic strategist Karen Finney argued No Labels had presented a “dangerous” threat to Biden’s re-election chances that Democrats, including her, actively worked to undermine.
They were very dangerous because they had over $70 million to get on the ballot,” Finney recalled.
“And what they were promising…They were promising that they could win states like Texas. And again, it was totally illogical, but it was a very real threat that myself and others worked very hard to not just undermine, but to make sure that the people they were talking to understood, that their rhetoric just did not work, and their math did not work[.”]

Deals with Terrorists

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is applying ever increasing pressure on Israel to reach an agreement with the terrorist Hamas regarding cease fires and hostages. This extends to his telecon with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu late last week, using the IDF’s screwup (an amazingly rare occurrence, illustrating the IDF’s amazing skill at minimizing civilian casualties, a skill that is amazingly ignored by the press and by Biden and his SecState) as his latest excuse for pressuring Israel.

President Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to work out the issue during a phone call Thursday. He also called for an immediate cease-fire and for Netanyahu to empower his negotiators to reach a deal, according to US officials.

Market Imperatives

Ford has said that it will delay the rollout of its wholly battery-powered three-row electric vehicles, its new model SUVs, from 2025 to 2027. That’s not because of development or production problems, either.

The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide customers increased durability and better value.

“Allowing the consumer market to develop further”—in other words, consumers don’t want these battery SUVs, and Ford isn’t intent on producing and not selling them, until customers actually want them. Which they don’t, never minding Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s æther-borne claim to the contrary.

Coerced Abortion

Kansas’ House Bill 2436, as amended by the Senate (the Supplemental Note was incorporated), was then passed by the House 82-37 and by the Senate 27-11. With unusual clarity for politicians, the definitions of Coercion and of Financial harm are defined in the bill with crystalline clarity.

The bill would make it a felony to coerce a pregnant woman into having an abortion through physical or financial threats….

Now it’s before Kansas’ Progressive-Democrat Governor Laura Kelly, who is dithering over whether to sign it.

How is there even a question about this? Leave aside the baby’s right to its life, whatever happened—in Kelly’s mind—to a woman’s control over her own body?

Yet Another Misapprehension

…by the Left in its favoring of and dependency on Government. This one concerns what passes for education in our public schools and is written openly by a Letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section.

The letter writer opines that since everything else is free in those schools, so should lunches be free.

We have long provided free books and transportation for schoolchildren, regardless of their parents’ income.

No, we never have. Those books and transportation means were, and are, paid for with our tax money.

Senator Bob Casey’s Priorities

Fox News has pointed out a difference between Pennsylvania’s Progressive-Democrat Senator Bob Casey’s commentary on George Floyd’s murder more than three years ago and his lack of commentary concerning this year’s February murder of Laken Riley.

It should be instructive to Pennsylvania’s voters that while Casey was loud and vociferous regarding the murder of a black man at the hands of police, the murder of a white woman at the hands of an illegal alien is beneath his august notice.

What Progressive-Democrats Think of our Veterans

Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Governor Maura Healey is moving to turn an erstwhile Boston veterans care facility into a shelter for illegal aliens. She’s intent on converting

the historic Chelsea Soldiers’ Home—which was vacant and scheduled for demolition—into a site for 100 migrant families and pregnant women[.]

Meanwhile, there remain several hundred of our veterans—who are in our nation legally—in Boston who are homeless and need shelter of their own. When the facility was open to veterans, they had to pay $10-$30 per month, depending on whether they needed nursing care or just a place to be. The facility was closed last December, though in lieu of a different, larger facility. Closed, not kept open as an additional facility for our veterans.

Biden’s Open Support for Hamas

His support, and his hypocrisy, is made especially manifest by this remark of his regarding Israel’s accidental bombing of a World Central Kitchen food delivery truck:

Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen.

Never mind that Biden has chosen to offer no evidence—at any time in his drumbeat of condemnation of Israel in its war for survival—that Israel isn’t doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties.